Joke 'em if they can't take a fuck

Rico got an authentic 'zing' in Comments yesterday about this post:

Couldn't agree less
"At the end of the month, Bill Gates is stepping down as chief software architect of Microsoft , and retiring from his day-to-day role at Microsoft, the company he co-founded and led for most of the past 30 years."
Rico says Lance Ulanoff (click on the post title to read his column in PC Magazine) is entitled to his opinion, misguided though it may be, about Bill Gates: "Say what you will about the intense, sometimes mean-spirited and quietly driven man, but without Bill Gates, there's likely no Microsoft, no Windows, no Office suite, and, perhaps, even a delay in the technology and Internet revolution."
You can also read Michael Miller's 'exit interview' with Gates here. (And what sick sense of humor or just bad programming put the 'upgrade to Mac' ad next to the Gates interview?)
Rico says he still regrets having the opportunity and not acting on it, but he did let Gates walk out of a room at Apple alive... (His apologies to all those forced to use Gates machines.)

The reader was not amused:

anonymous said...
Rico, stop talking about your apple days---it's boring and probably didn't happen anyway--you repeat it every week. you greatly exaggerate your importance in the history of apple/claris--get over it. I remain anon because you are an idiot and I will now stop reading this ridiculous blog--which I had started when you were ill. how many friends do you have left besides your cats?

Now, a 'real' curmudgeon would probably take this sort of abuse in stride, but it made me grit my teeth. (Just a curmudgeon-in-training I guess.) But it did elicit this curmudgeon's considered response:

Hey, he's right; it's boring. But I was there and he wasn't, so my memory wins. (And would I have really whacked Bill? Nah. But the world would've been different, and maybe better, if I had.) My importance at Apple? Miniscule, if not less. I was, after all, only employee 7667; there have been over 50,000 now. My importance at Claris? Major, at least for the first six or eight years.
I'm sorry I don't know who this weasel is, because I'm sure there are pointed things I'd like to say, but I don't know who to aim them at. As for being an idiot, maybe so. But at least it's not an anonymous one. As for my friends, I have many more than I have cats, that's for sure. This asshole, whoever it was, isn't one of them...

(As for friends, some of them already commented.)